Forget about canoeing and arts and crafts. This summer, camp moves into the 21st century with paintball, haute cuisine and spy craft.
May 21, 2005

Camp Niche
By Tralee Pearce

After sleeping at a luxury hotel, eating a gourmet breakfast and hopping three ski lifts and a bus, you spend the morning snowboarding atop Whistler's famed Blackcomb Glacier. After a catered lunch, you spend the afternoon bungee jumping and playing paintball.

Just another average day at summer camp for some lucky daredevils at the Whistler Summer Ski and Snowboard Camp, one of a growing number of summer camps catering to a sophisticated niche market.

Roughing it in the woods and gluing macaroni onto paper plates seems a little quaint and low-tech for some MTV-generation campers and their parents. At just a few bucks under $2,000 for a week, riding the half-pipe is no budget niche either.

"It's like an all-inclusive vacation for kids," says Kyle Stevenson, director of marketing and sponsorship for the eight-year-old venture (run in conjunction with a long-standing Whistler fixture, the Dave Murray Ski and Snowboard Camp), which draws 70 per cent of its campers from the United States, starting from the age of 7.

(Oh, and in case you're thinking of ditching the kids and heading out yourself, the oldest return "camper" is 72.)

Mr. Stevenson says his niche owes its currency to trendy sports. In the off times, kids have access to wakeboarding, skateboarding and other snowboard-copacetic pursuits.

"It comes out of the whole X-games thing -- kids are into skateboarding and all the new kinds of sports," he says. "They can come to our camp and do it all in one week. They can have the best coaches you can get. Pro riders.

"If you want crafts, don't come to this camp."

Torontonian Lloyd Nesbitt sent his 16-year-old daughter, Andrea, to the camp last year.

"Usually with other overnight camps in Ontario, she asked to quit early," he says, adding that, as a sports podiatrist, he approves of the camp because of their safety considerations and attention to medical details.

She also met new friends from places such as Israel with whom she is still in touch, says Andrea, who is heading back this summer and hopes to become an instructor.

One of the trendsetters in the field is an outfit in California (where else?) called Pali Adventures, which offers 18 choices, including extreme sports, Hollywood stunt camp, acting camps, a haute culinary camp and rock-star camp.

Founder Andy Wexler started the company in 1997 for savvy 12-to-16-year-olds. Capacity is 240, spread out over the various specialties.

"A lot of these kids might have gone somewhere before and they're ready for the next thing," he says. "The reason we opened these specialty camps is we thought kids wanted to have fun like at a traditional camp, but they want to come home with a skill."

Add to that ambitious parents and you can see why he's almost sold out for the summer.

"A lot of people really want their kids to do seven things during the summer. This is just one of their stops."

In this more frenetic culture, his prediction is that the traditional camps, which can run up to eight weeks long, will fragment into shorter sessions.

"There's not as much interest in doing something for eight weeks. If we did three-day programs, we'd have 1,000 kids in each one. But we want it to be long enough that it's interesting."

Being in California, he has access to people such as professional stuntmen to lead the classes. For an idea of the luxe factor, the camp chef used to cook for the Saudi royal family.

"It's the best food you'll have in your life. We're not the standard," Mr. Wexler says.

The cost is $1,435 (U.S.) for one week, which puts it in line, he says, with "high-end private summer camps." The camp is so popular, he added 20-per-cent capacity last year and 30 per cent this year.

"We're building cabins as fast as we can, some of our programs are already sold out and that's months before usual. The response is phenomenal."

Kids are divided into cabins based on age group. They focus on their niche skill in the morning, then related activities in the afternoon.

"If you're in secret-agent camp you can pick horseback riding or waterskiing or even cooking."

Clearly, many kids will be dabbling in skills they might base a career on.

"We have a film institute where kids make their own movies. And an acting academy where kids actually go and audition for agents. That was very popular last year."

There's also a broadcasting academy that has kids put on a five-minute broadcast every night at dinner.

"It's a taste of, 'Do you want to do this as a career?' "
For the budding Nikita, there's secret-agent camp -- Pali's most popular offering by far.

"We teach kids how to drive ATVs, play paintball games. Evasive go-cart driving, martial arts. Co-ordinated rapid-room entries like a SWAT team."
Mr. Wexler quickly follows up this list by saying, "They learn teamwork and critical thinking and problem solving."

Aside from snowboard camps, we're nowhere near this niche camping level in Canada. But David Graham, president of the Ontario Camping Association, says we'll be seeing more. "We're seeing specialization. We're seeing great success with camps that offer things like theatre or waterskiing, that focus on a specific skill or activity."

Mr. Graham says one factor that will drive the trend here is immigration.

"Within the industry, people are realizing that the new Canadian markets are still virtually untapped in the sense that new Canadians aren't aware of what Canadian camps are," he says. "We're not responding with what they're looking for."

That's compounded by the fact that the number of children in the province is getting smaller too.

"It's the echo generation. The baby boomers' kids are getting older," he says. "That being said, the vast majority of children in the province don't go to camp. There's a tremendously untapped market. Camp hasn't had to adjust for the past 40 or 50 years."

And whether it's snowboarding or kayaking at the core, the point of summer camp remains the same, Mr. Graham says.

"The goal is to help children realize their potential and help them to realize they are good people and become better people in learning how to get along with others."

One shift he is seeing is traditional camps letting parents in on the action.

A number of camps are allocating family time along with kid-only camping, so the whole family gets to experience lakeside fun.

"It's great for introducing new campers to camp. Homesickness doesn't become an issue. They get to experience it as a group. That's one trend in a number of camps."

This is especially true in day camps. At Toronto's private parenting centre Ella, there are a number of two-week day camps geared toward babies -- with mom or caregiver in tow -- for up to $300.

"We say you're never too old to go to camp," owner Amy Halpern says. "You don't take yourself as seriously in the summertime. Camp has the connotation of 'let's have fun, let's explore.' We've been cooped up all summer. We're tying to have a sense of humour."

And the moms get to behave like kids -- many are making plans to meet up at camp with girlfriends. Baby may be too young to care, but mom's happy.

"It's about getting out of the house and having interaction with other people."

Ms. Halpern has found -- as have most niche camps -- that "what parents really want is for us to do the homework for them and organize
everything for them. They have enough going on in their life."
To that end, she's offering Camp Papoose for moms with babies up to four months old, Camp Wiggle for 5 to 11 months and Camp Curious for 12 to 14 months.

Camp Curious, obviously, is when baby is most independent. "It's taught by off-duty teachers. There's theme-based play, creative exploration, and we focus on getting them moving and doing crafts."

Most camps start at the age of 21⁄2 because that's when you can legally drop a baby off at a centre. For Camp Curious, Ella allows moms to send a caregiver in their place.

Mr. Wexler says you won't see traditional camps change to fit these kinds of new parameters.

"I don't think it's really the direction it's going in. A lot of summer camps have been around since the late 1880s and they haven't changed anything in 100 years," he says. "As far as new overnight camps opening, I only know of two or three that have opened in the last 10 years. "To come into the industry, you might as well do something different. And as long as those other ones are still working, I assume they'll keep doing what they're doing."

Mr. Graham says some of those traditional camps may actually, in fact, become a niche of their own, if parental nostalgia holds sway.

"We're also seeing a resurgence to some degree in traditional types of camps," he says. "Parents have their camp experience -- a very rustic experience -- in their minds as something urban kids just don't get any more."
Tralee Pearce is a Globe and Mail feature writer.

Camp contacts

The Canadian Camping Association. With links to each provincial camping association: http://www.ccamping.org or 1-877-427-6958.

Whistler Snowboard Camps: http://www.whistlersnowboardcamps.com or 1.866.444.7433.

Ella Centre for Pregnancy & Parenting in Toronto: http://www.ellacentre.com or 416.425.6500.

Pali Adventures in Southern California: http://www.paliadventures.com or 1-888-6-SUMMER.